“Look, Marceau, it’s not a fucking money-back guarantee proposition,” Chehab said. “You asked me to do it clean. I did it clean.”
Chehab was sitting on a high stool at the blackjack table of the InterContinental casino. The dealer, a young woman in a tuxedo with a jacket nipped tightly around her waist, motioned to Marceau with a deck of cards, but he shook his head.
Drink in hand, Marceau turned around and leaned with his back against the table. “You wonder where that shithead manager gets these goddamn dealers,” he said crossly. These days he went from one cock-up to another. A man who liked plans, and Marceau knew that he was goddamn good at plans, he hated cock-ups. Everything had been worked out, the miracle plan that had come to him in a flash on the flight up to Paris, like the touch of a fairy godmother’s wand on his shoulder, had been just that: miraculous. With a flourish he had signed Jacques Delpech’s name to the new account forms and sent them back to Guichard, and voilà, in a matter of days, one million U.S. dollars pitter-pattering down into the account. A peppery fax to Guichard, and the rest of the loot, another four million plumped up the old nest egg. No cock-ups there. Not with Marceau in control. The problem was having to depend on somebody else.
“I’ve had fake identity papers made up for you. Passport, driver’s license—Belgian, just like you said—the whole thing,” Chehab said. A thick, shiny scar cut through and separated into two parts his left eyebrow, placing one side higher than the other so that he had a constant look of extraordinary surprise on his large, round face.
“I don’t need them yet,” Marceau said. He didn’t think he would ever need the identity papers to get at the money. After all, it was his signature on the account. But just in case. He was a goddamn good planner.
“Well, they’re ready when you are.” Chehab winked at the dealer. “How about a game?”
“No,” Marceau said, lighting a cigarette. “We gotta talk about this other . . . thing, this problem.”
“Well, I gotta play. That’s what I do at night. I don’t know what you do at night, but I play blackjack. What do you want to talk about? There’s nothing to say. He was wearing a seat belt,” Chehab said sourly. “He’s American.”
“He’s not American. He sleeps with an American.”
“Same thing,” Chehab said. “And we cleaned up after ourselves.” He took out a Cuban cigar and began to score it. “That costs money. Cleaning up after ourselves.”
Marceau pulled on his cigarette and stared out over the large, high ceilinged room, entirely in darkness except for spots of light brought down low over the gaming tables. Faces were dimmed and obscured, rising into the shadows above illuminated torsos. It was a weeknight, a slow night with a dozen regulars and a handful of prostitutes milling around the tables and running back and forth to the ladies’ room.
Marceau figured that he had two possibilities: he could stop where he was and save himself a bundle of money that he could maybe use buying Margot another, smaller annuity. Or he could go ahead and do what he had decided up there on his bedroom terrace that night listening to Stevie Wonder singing his heart out to all those beer-besotted mourners down there at the end of the street. He had decided to do what he had to do and to do it as quickly as possible. If he stopped now, if he didn’t go through with it, he would be sitting up all night on some bedroom terrace sometime, some place for the rest of his life. The Swiss bank account, who knows what kind of cock-up Delpech could cause. It was through watching Chehab and his guys that he figured out how easy it could be. Unless there was a goddamn cock-up.
“Well,” Marceau said, “Can you get it done right this time?”
“What the hell you mean, get it done right this time?”
“I mean . . .” Marceau hesitated, avoiding Chehab’s eyes. “I mean. Get it done. This time.”
“It’ll cost.”
“I’ll pay.”
“You haven’t heard how much yet.”
“I’ll pay,” Marceau said wearily. “Just get it done.”